French officials have dispatched a military unit to the crash site of an Air Algerie jet that crashed in Mali carrying 116 people after vanishing from radar shortly after takeoff late Wednesday night.

French president Francois Hollande announced Friday that there were no survivors in the crash of the aircraft which disappeared from radar less than an hour after it took off early Thursday from Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, for Algiers.

Speaking after a crisis meeting, Hollande also announced that one of the aircraft's two black boxes has been found in the wreckage, in the Gossi region near the border with Burkina Faso. It is being taken to the northern Mali city of Gao.

Meanwhile France's interior minister said Friday that terrorism cannot be excluded as a cause for the tragedy, although he believed it was likely due to bad weather.

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